


Legend's Ending

by thisbluespirit



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, The Shadow of the Tower
Genre: 15th Century, 500 prompts, Canonical Character Death, Community: hc_bingo, Dark, F/M, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-11 02:13:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13514595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: Elizabeth surrenders everything; it's how she'll win in the end.





	Legend's Ending

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dimity Blue (Arnie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arnie/gifts).



> Written for Dimity Blue in the 500 Prompts meme, for the prompt "38: close your eyes - Henry VII/Elizabeth of York (Shadow of the Tower) and (by a metaphorical, but permissable, cheat) Hurt/Comfort Bingo square "sensory deprivation."

She closes her eyes, hidden in sanctuary, and dreams of a prince far away, waiting to come home. 

In waking hours, she does not, of course. Elizabeth is young, but she has learned the ways of the court from both sides now and she understands the reality. Her prince will likely never come, or not be hers, or arrive only to perish in battle, or worse, suffer a traitor’s death in the Tower. This is only a bargain of necessity and she has too much pride to indulge in foolish thoughts. And, oh, she would not gratify the Lady Margaret by such. (The Lady Margaret has a certain triumph in her eyes when she looks at Elizabeth now.) It is, besides, not a time for lightness.

But in the darkness, in the night, when God only may see her secrets, she wonders. She is young, and curious, and still inclined to hope; she thinks of hearts as well as crowns.

* * *

Henry refuses to look at his uncle, who with his usual instinct for his nephew’s welfare has caught him in his very physical reaction to the rumours that have now reached France. He wipes his mouth, and straightens up, stiff with fear, not pride.

“Rumours, that’s all,” says Jasper, clapping a hand to his shoulder and gripping it in warm support. “Malicious tittle-tattle and gossip. Where’s the sense in it, Harry, _bach_? King Richard to wed his niece! The pope would never allow it even if it were true. Besides, he’s put her out of his reach, declaring her a bastard.”

Henry turns slowly; the incident to be passed over and hopefully forgotten as swiftly. “And my claim alone is sufficient – for all good Lancastrians.”

“And your claim is sufficient,” says Jasper. He grins. “For anyone, whoever they be!”

His uncle’s logic on the subject of the rumoured match is impeccable. Henry is too intelligent not to see it, but he’s blinded now by old demons and irrationality takes root: his promised bride has betrayed him already.

* * *

Elizabeth laughs on their wedding day as they join hands – she tightens her fingers around his – and not only for the strangeness of it, that she, in many ways the true heir to the throne, should marry this usurper, the Lady Margaret’s son – a man who hesitates to crown her queen and will never come a-courting. It’s also her victory, and that a strange one also, but her wishes have changed of late. She closes her eyes to the battles, the bloodshed, those kept in the Tower yet, and reaches for Henry. Like any true Plantagenet, she will do anything to gain what she wants, and now she wants the King himself and not the throne, not the treacherous, fatal crown.

She’s learning his ways, a little, learning the games he plays. (He promises to tell the truth to her; she will know a falsehood when she hears one. She believes him. And so, she feels, to keep that promise, there are things he simply will not say.) She’ll beat him at it one day, for already she holds the most important piece: she has, once the feasting is done and they’re left alone behind the curtains, the king in her arms. He wants her too.

And for that, she swears, he will forfeit not only his vows and his faith, but also his heart and his trust. She’s dizzy with the idea, fingers trembling as she surrenders herself and all that she is. It’s how she’ll win in the end.

* * *

He never quite sees the obvious, this wisest king in Christendom (some might say). Or, no, he sees, but looks away that he might not have to believe. That would be too great a risk; too great a loss if that belief should prove false.

He loves her more than he will admit to himself, but he knows the bargain that was made; he does not expect that she should love him. She has given him all that was promised without that in addition. He gives her gifts: he gives her jewels and books in thanks, when she will take them. He gives what is owed to her station; she gives again to her charities, her sisters, her good causes, and says to him in so many ways, as she did once aloud, “No; not that way.” She asks for his heart in light touches, in small, intimate gifts, her lips on his, her presence by his side when others stand against him.

And since he dare not quite believe, he shuts his eyes when he gives that heart, in teasing laughter, in rings and coin; all the better to deny it to himself after.

* * *

Elizabeth builds a garden, a palace, yet all the while treachery is never far away. Every time it comes, it steals from her and yet her only safe path is to ignore it. She can, for a while, lose Henry again. Doubt so easily flares up in him and each betrayal makes him seek for others. She dares not try and use her influence with him for anything but the smallest or most personal of matters. Nobody must be more careful than the Queen. She keeps her eye not only on her station, but her prize, yet sometimes she wonders what the cost might be, the lost good that might else have been done, before she turns her head away again from such calculations; the equation of trust and mistrust. Love always weighs down the scales in his favour. 

The Queen hears the King’s cries in the night; she eavesdrops on his nightmares. She wakes him and claims those terrors for her own, that he might comfort her, but he knows as well as she what she does; he laughs, he chides her for it in between his kisses. It’s safer that way around, and sometimes, then, he’ll let her enter into his pain and fear, at least for a while in the hidden world of the night. She worries about leaving him now she’s with child, both for this temporary while and if, God forbid, it should be forever. 

And yet her young sister thinks her only weakness is for comfits and calls her a saint. Elizabeth doesn’t know whether to laugh or to cry: her greatest weakness is not and has never been for comfits.

* * *

God spares his life. It is a blessing, of course. The Prince Harry is as yet so young and heaven only knows what should become of him if his father should die now. The shadow of other, lost youthful heirs is never far from Henry’s thoughts: another long-ago Arthur, the Prince Harry’s uncles in the Tower, Warwick; even Henry himself knows what it is to be a child burned by the danger of being born too close to the throne.

But, by God’s wounds, he is weary and longs for the time when he might lay himself down after her. Bess’s death has left him numb: he feels nothing, nothing moves him. If only it would; if only it could. There is only deadness and pain, and that, too, no doubt, will pass in its time, as will he. It is hard to make it matter now that she is gone. Her loss is the fatal blow; the wound will fester until it claims him. She’s defeated him, though that was never her intention. 

He carries on as he must, but it’s so easy now to close his eyes to all he once watched like a hawk: let his ministers be corrupt if they will – it keeps down the nobles who might otherwise harry him to his grave, and his son after him, if they had their way.

When he looks into the mirror now, he sees nothing.


End file.
